


Astra Inclinant

by thekindmagic



Series: Astra Inclinant [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-14 12:11:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9180877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekindmagic/pseuds/thekindmagic
Summary: “Look,” Aranea laughs, shaking her head. “I’m not trying to shit on your destiny. But the way I see it? A lot of the time, there’s no big mystery. You either keep going, or you don’t.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a "Luna Lives" story, starting just after Altissia. I'm a little less concerned with 100% character accuracy than with trying to figure out where her character COULD have gone...  
> I have this outlined, I definitely intend to write to the ending of the game.  
> (Intentions: complicated platonic soulmates Noctis and Luna, side-pairing Ignis/Noctis, Luna having a lot of interesting relationships with the Chocobros and Iris and her brother and Gentiana, slow-burn ridiculously guarded Luna/Aranea as the main pairing)  
> 

_"And men said that the blood of stars flowed in her veins."_  
  
_― C. S. Lewis_

   
  


Every evening when dusk comes, (earlier each time,) the airships land in some secluded spot under an increasingly starless sky, drawn together in a tight circle like a herd of Garula.

Luna is always at their center.

Aranea has told her that she doesn’t have to come outside. Admittedly, it was hard at first - Luna could still feel Chancellor Izunia’s knife between her ribs when she breathed too deeply - but now the effort it takes to keep her head up as she makes her way down the ramp of Aranea’s gleaming red flagship isn’t worth commenting on.

She sits where she’s visible, with the careful posture she’s practiced over long years of welcoming strangers into an Oracle’s healing embrace: open, safe, calm and in control. She cheats with magic to maintain a passable campfire, feeding leaves and twigs to the flames to watch them die in a blaze of light. She waits to see if anyone will join her.

More often than not, the answer is no.

She doesn’t blame the mercenaries for averting their eyes when she catches them looking. She isn’t sure what defense she’d give if they came up and asked their questions to her face.

The nights are growing longer, colder, and it’s all Luna can do sometimes to pick out the constellations her mother showed her as a child.

Ravus had always favored The Ring, for the story of the man the Six had found worthy of their trust and power. Those stars are dim and gloomy now, flickering on the edge of shadow.

On clear nights, Luna can still trace the shape of Shiva’s constellation. She used to sneak out of bed to the balcony when she was younger to watch the stars. Gentiana had joined her sometimes, her eyes always closed. Still, she’d smiled every time Luna had pointed out the Ice Goddess’s glittering form.

Did Noctis watch the stars as religiously as Luna? Did he spend each day with the same unshakable knowledge that the stars were watching him, too?

Does he hold himself in the same miserable contempt for letting it come to this?

“What’s the forecast, Lulu?”

Aranea stabs her lance into the ground next to Luna’s sputtering campfire and leans against it. It’s calculated nonchalance, like everything Aranea does; that lance will be wiped down meticulously back on the ship.

Luna makes a show of closing her eyes and pretending to meditate. “Sunny and warm,” she says.

Aranea nods, amused. The daemon hunt must have gone well. “Could you keep the headwinds down for us? Biggs has been bitching.”

Luna smiles. “I’ll see what I can do.”

It’s strange not to be treated as a walking tragedy. Since the Crystal reached out to a little boy in Insomnia and decided the ending of his story, Luna hasn’t been quite human to anyone who’s known her.

Each time the sun rises, it’s by the blood and determination of Tenebrae’s royal line.

According to Aranea’s Imperial intelligence, the air itself has finally turned against them: a gathering fog of parasitic darkness leeching from people’s hearts and leaving them empty, daemonic. The Oracle is meant to be the antithesis of that darkness, standing in opposition until the King of Light comes to vanquish it forever.

It’s all the same charge in the end, whether healing or staving off the darkness: gather strength and give it back. It becomes second nature. But it becomes more challenging in times of weakness or despair. Say, if the Oracle in question were dying.

And Luna _is_ dying.

If Aranea knows that, as Luna imagines she must, it doesn’t seem to bother her.

“Room for one more?” Aranea nods to the makeshift bench Luna’s pulled up to her campfire. “I’ll pay with my sparkling company.”

Luna gestures graciously, as though welcoming a guest to join her in Fleuret Manor. Not that she ever had guests to speak of. “Please,” she says.

Her offer of sparkling company notwithstanding, Aranea apparently doesn’t feel much like talking. Luna doesn’t mind. She keeps her eyes on the fire, listening as Aranea settles in beside her, undoing each piece of her armor.

“Shit,” Aranea hisses.

Luna looks up.

“Fucking daemons.” Aranea peels dark fabric back from her shoulder. It clings to her skin, tacky with blood.

“You’re hurt,” Luna says, a little shocked.

Aranea shoots her a look. “No, _really_?” She wipes the blood from her skin, frustrated, unflinching. “Iron Giant. I knew it snagged me. Didn’t think it was anything serious.”

Luna can’t see how bad the wound is - it’s too dark, the firelight isn’t nearly enough. If Aranea is willing to complain though, it can’t be good.

“Let me heal you,” Luna offers.

The look on Aranea’s face is almost funny. “You kidding? You’re barely back on your feet.”

It’s true, healing magic is draining, though Luna isn’t sure how Aranea knows that. But as exhausting as it is, it’s also exhilarating. The best part of being the Oracle was getting to feel the love and hope of the cosmos gathered in her fingertips, watching the faces of people with broken bodies and heavy hearts as they let themselves welcome light back into their lives. There was reassurance in it, in being able to give and give and never run dry.

And Aranea saved her life.

“I want to.”

When Luna reaches out, Aranea recoils, flinching away from her touch. Like she’s _afraid_ of her.

“I’m fine,” Aranea snaps. “This is what potions are for.”

Luna withdraws. She watches as Aranea pulls a potion from her belt. The smell is overwhelming when she opens it; thin and slightly acrid, far too sweet. It makes Luna a little dizzy.

Aranea pours half the bottle over her shoulder. The blood runs down her arm, diluted now. There’s a faint ringing sound, like tracing the rim of a wine glass; it’s almost drowned out by the steady smoldering of the campfire. Aranea shudders, shuts her eyes, and tips her head back. She swallows the rest of the bottle in one gulp.

Luna… can’t remember ever using a potion. When she was very young, minor hurts were seen to by her miraculous mother. Once she grew older, any sickness or injury was treated as a lesson, a meditation on human suffering for the god-touched Oracle. Ravus had gotten a dressing-down from the head of the priestly order once for sneaking her soup.

“What does it feel like?” Luna asks quietly.

Aranea laughs, tossing the empty bottle over her shoulder. “Like getting fucked by Ifrit.”

Luna shakes her head, hides her smile.

“No,” Aranea corrects herself, peeling back her shirt again to check her shoulder. “That’s a phoenix down. Potions and elixirs are more like Ramuh. Maybe Shiva, too. You talk to the gods, right? How do they feel about threesomes?”

“I’ve never asked,” Luna says mildly.

Aranea sighs. “Total waste.”

They sit quietly for a while, both watching the fire burn down.

It occurs to Luna, not for the first time, that she doesn’t have to be here. Yes, Aranea saved her life in Altissia, but at Ravus’s direction. Luna doesn’t owe her anything. For the first time in her life, she’s not under supervision, and she has no immediate goal. Everyone assumes she’s dead; there are no expectations. She’s out of ways to help. Out of things to do.

Luna studies Aranea’s profile, her carefully casual posture, the way her hair sticks to her forehead with sweat. “Why did you become a mercenary?”

Aranea scoffs, like it’s a ridiculous question. “Ask _how_ , not why.”

What is that supposed to mean? It’s not like the gods declared that Aranea _had_ to spend her life hunting daemons for an Imperial regime bent on world domination.

Aranea must sense her skepticism, because she turns to Luna and smiles: a challenge. “Why did you become an Oracle?”

Luna looks at her like she’s lost her mind.

Aranea shrugs. “Could’ve run away. A lot of kids do.”

Luna clenches her fist.

No, she couldn’t have. She’s never _considered_ such a thing.

…But after all these years, she still remembers how it felt to let go of King Regis’s hand. She’d been conscious of that decision: standing by as her home burned down around her, watching the boy who shared her fate escape capture and imprisonment while she was surrounded by Imperial troops.

Aranea must find the answer she wanted in Luna’s expression, because she nods, satisfied. “You picked it by not picking anything else. Still a choice. Not really a reason, though.”

“I have a duty to the world,” Luna says flatly.

“Look,” Aranea laughs, shaking her head. “I’m not trying to shit on your destiny. But the way I see it? A lot of the time, there’s no big mystery. You either keep going, or you don’t.”

Luna stares into the fire until the light floods her eyes, until she can almost forget how dark it is above and around her. Sunrise is still a very long way off.

Eventually, Aranea yawns beside her, stops just short of touching her arm. “You ready to turn in?”

Luna follows her back up the ramp into the flagship, settles into her cot in Aranea’s personal quarters.

There are no windows, but she lays awake until dawn breaks, feels it break inside her chest, too.

She looks over at Aranea, still asleep.

“Sunny and warm,” Luna murmurs.


	2. Chapter 2

_“Then what is magic for?" Prince Lír demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder hard, to keep from falling._  
_Schmedrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for.”_

_― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn_

 

 

“Your brother’s gone.”

Luna blinks awake and sits up on her cot, her still-healing wound aching. She rests her bare feet against the ships’s cold metal floor to help shake off the last vestiges of sleep. 

“How?”

Still standing in the doorway, Aranea crosses her arms. She stares fixedly at the wall behind Luna’s head. “Made a break for it, sounds like. Just like us.”

It’s no use pretending Aranea’s information isn’t good. She’s still in contact with people in Niflheim, soldiers and scientists who respect and trust her honesty. So many people too afraid to break ranks, but with just enough courage to break their silence. 

Stars bless and keep them.

Luna shuts her eyes and pictures her last days with Ravus: him sending message after message begging her to give up her quest and come home, following her out into the flower fields, coming to her in what she’d thought was resigned solidarity before she sought out Leviathan. 

How long had he been planning to save her, the stubborn ass? Why had she not seen how conflicted he was? She’d always known how much he loved their home, how desperately he wanted to be the people’s hero, their savior. Had he kept his own plans from the very beginning, standing with the Empire only in order to… _what_? Why hadn’t he _talked_ to her?

Ravus despairing, and her own concerns as Oracle too lofty to let her reach out as his sister. 

No different from any given time in their lives, really.

“Hey,” Aranea says. “You hear what I said?”

Without opening her eyes, Luna nods. “Is he dead?”

“No word. Doesn’t seem like Izunia’s style to keep an execution private, so… maybe he’s still out there.”

Maybe. Luna leans forward and rests her head in her hands. After a few seconds, she hears Aranea make her way hesitantly across the room. The weight when she settles down beside Luna is solid and anchoring, and Luna leans into her until their sides are touching. Aranea stiffens, but doesn’t move away.

“He’d go home,” Aranea says. “Wouldn’t he?”

Laughing humorlessly, Luna raises her head. It would be completely idiotic for Ravus to return to Tenebrae, to the Fleuret Manor. With the Empire on his tail, it would be a death sentence to do something so predictably _sincere_.

…Then again, her brother is of the Oracle’s line just as much as Luna herself is. In his own way, Ravus has always known where he belongs. 

“You may know him better than I do,” Luna says bitterly.

Aranea shrugs. “I know what _you_ would do.”

“Then you know I’m going to follow him.”

Aranea makes a face and shoves her bangs back from her eyes. Luna is prepared for cursing, for a list of reasons why she’s being an idiot, for Aranea to fail to understand. 

Noctis is out of Luna’s reach for now - he and his friends disappeared after Altissia, and there are no more gods for her to seek out for him. The only thing she can do to help is to survive, to stay out of the Imperial Chancellor’s sight, to slow the encroaching darkness until the day she can find Noctis again, or until the day the weight of the Covenants finally claims her.

But in the meantime? She’s prepared to jump out of a moving aircraft if that’s what it takes. She’s _going_ back to Tenebrae.

Aranea sighs. “I’ll call everybody in,” she says. “We’ll move out in two hours.”

Even if Luna had any desire to ask why, she’s too stunned.

Aranea catches her expression and smiles. “First you, now your brother. Looks like I’m officially in the search and rescue business.”

—-

Luna knows they’re close when she hears the screaming. 

The noise and activity in the ship’s hangar climbs, former-mercenaries tripping over themselves to gather their equipment and confront the daemons snarling in the dark.

Aranea spins her lance impatiently, waiting for the ship to get close enough to the battle for her to jump. “You _idiot_ , Ravus,” she says under her breath.

This is what Luna had feared. The occupation of her home had always felt like corruption, her brother’s Imperial standing like a betrayal. But now that he’s defected… the alternative is so much worse. 

With the hangar open, the foothills around the Fleuret Manor are laid out below. Shadowy rivers of people are streaming through the flower fields. Luna’s people are fleeing for their lives, their shouts mingling with the hissing and clanging of the daemons pursuing them. 

Nagas, lichs, the angry flares of bombs, hulking silhouettes closer to the manor that Luna can’t identify…

The airship is close enough now that Luna can pick out a child’s cry. Aranea makes a furious sound and bounces on the balls of her feet. 

“This is why the Empire wanted your daemons,” Luna says, her voice low and cold. There are no Imperial forces in sight, but nobody else could be responsible for this.

Aranea holds her eyes, defiant. “Hey, I _left_ , didn’t I?” 

Blame and forgiveness are all in the hands of the gods.

Luna turns away from Aranea, trying not to consider the fact that she’s only back in Tenebrae by means of an Imperial airship. She doesn’t understand, anymore. She’s lost sight of the divine plan, her head is ringing with screams. Is she alive only to witness this? To stand by helplessly as all the people she’d once healed with the power of an Oracle are torn apart before her eyes?

They’re close enough, now.

Aranea launches herself from the airship with undiscriminating fury, strikes hard at the lichs below her, and dissipates before anything left in her wake can recover. She channels herself into something devastating and untouchable. She moves like she doesn’t have it in her to be careful, like her existence is a law of nature, unquestionable. 

Luna doesn’t have that certainty.

But back in Aranea’s quarters, she has a trident.

That’s all she needs, really.

By the time the airship lands to let the rest of the mercenaries join the battle, Luna is back among them, weapon in hand. No one pays her any attention as she follows them out into the hills - she’s been borrowing sturdier clothing since she unofficially joined the crew, and she isn’t the only one on board with an unusual weapon. 

Besides, everyone has more pressing worries.

From the air, Luna hadn’t been able to see the smoke or feel the heat. The noise makes it difficult to get her bearings. 

A piercing sob cuts through the haze of growling and gunfire. Luna turns toward it and starts running. 

The hulking outline of a red giant comes rapidly into focus, but Luna is more concerned with the people at its feet: the figure of a child pulling at the hand of a fallen parent. 

The image of her mother’s body sharp in her mind, with the memory of the paralyzing fear she’d felt the last time her home had fallen, Luna sends a blast of magic toward the daemon’s back. It turns toward her slowly, while the little boy hides his face against his father’s shoulder. The giant makes a guttural sound like a laugh, and Luna readies her trident.

After Titan, Leviathan… This is almost easy.

All the daemon can do is kill her.

The giant swipes at her with its enormous sword, and Luna throws off the blow with her trident. She’s drawing on the Oracle’s power, but she still feels the impact jar her bones. She runs left, her legs shaking, trying to draw the daemon away from the civilians. It works. The giant follows her for a few steps. But then it strikes the ground between them with so much force that it splits the earth, sending Luna toppling forward to the jagged ground. Her legs are bleeding, but she pulls herself back up with her trident as the daemon covers the distance between them.

Luna has no combat training, no experience. She throws a barrier in front of her to absorb the next blow from the sword: more magic than she’s tried to hold since Altissia, since beginning the Covenants. She doesn’t take the force of the impact physically, but the strain on the barrier splits her chest and leaves her gasping. 

The only thing left to do is try to stab it.

Luna tightens her grip on her trident, praying that Bahamut’s weapon will refuse to let her embarrass it. Her knees are weak, her vision is blurry, but she steadies herself enough to take a step toward the daemon.

Before Luna can die in her attempt, however, there’s an impact like a bolt of lightning - the giant lets out an agonized roar and tumbles to its knees, slow and heavy, lurching forward to catch itself on its hands. With a surge of adrenaline, Luna rushes forward and stabs upward into the daemon’s face.

It shrieks. 

Dark blood runs down Luna’s trident over her hands, sprays into her hair. She wrenches her weapon away and draws backward, shaking.

Aranea pulls her lance from the dead daemon’s back and jumps down, cursing. “What the _fuck_ were you thinking?”

Luna turns to look for the frightened child. His father is sitting up. One of Aranea’s men is with them, calling for assistance.

Aranea follows Luna’s gaze, scowling through the grill of her helmet. “You’re not going back to the ship, are you?”

Leaning hard on her trident, Luna lifts her chin. “No.”

Aranea shakes her head, but doesn’t waste time arguing. “Fine,” she snaps, gesturing with her lance to the frightened civilians being haphazardly herded together by mercenaries, “then get them out of here.”

It strikes Luna that she’s never known anyone willing to let her take a risk. 

This is one she’s glad to take - she knows these hills, knows the path King Regis took with Noctis years ago. She can lead her people to relative safety.

First though, Luna looks Aranea dead in the eyes. “The manor,” she says. “Clear the top floors, and burn it.”

Aranea looks at her like she’s gone mad. “What?”

“It’s still hours before sunrise,” Luna says, wishing she couldn’t feel the certainty of it in the ripped edges where her magic is bleeding into her chest. 

They need _light_. There’s no way to clear this daemon horde without it, no way keep the monsters at bay. There are fires littered throughout the foothills, but those are angry and orange, daemonic: more heat than light. Luna knows her ancestral home will burn bright and clean, will send itself up in service to its people.

It takes a moment, but Aranea understands. “…You sure?”

Luna laughs, slightly hysterical. “Suddenly you’re sentimental?”

Aranea grabs Luna by the shoulders and squeezes - an oddly quiet moment in the midst of the chaos. Then she nods. “Get clear.”

—-

Luna’s plan works as well as she could have hoped. 

Once she leads the mercenaries and their charges to the outlying cliffs, once the airships have set up a perimeter and are forcing the daemons back toward the manor’s brilliant light, Luna stops and looks back.

Her legs are bruised and gashed, she’s covered in dark blood, but she’s satisfied with her answer to the Empire’s message. 

She looks for her bedroom window, and for Ravus’s. She can’t find them through the flames.

Luna stands among her frightened people and watches her home burn for the second time. This time though, she gets to hear the howls of daemons scattering back into the dark in its wake. 

Whatever closure is supposed to feel like, it's probably the best she can expect.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Women who were brought up devout and fearful_  
_Get stirred, like anyone else._  
_Want men. Want_  
_other women. Stink under the arms at the end of_  
_the day. Get_  
_that all too familiar mix of fear and discontent_  
_in the night. Want to do the things_  
_that they ‘Must Not Do.’  
_ _Those dirty, bloody attractive things."_

_—Yrsa Daley-Ward_

 

  

Back in the airship, Luna gets drunk.

It’s Aranea’s idea.

The all-out attack on Fleuret Manor means that the Empire didn’t need to look for or capture Ravus. They have him already. He’s either dead, or he will be soon. 

There’s still no word on Noctis. Hopefully Umbra and Pryna are with him, because Luna hasn’t seen her companions in weeks.

She hasn’t seen Gentiana either, though that’s less unusual - Gentiana comes and goes as she pleases. Still, it’s an absence that aches.

The nights continue to get longer. 

Luna can feel the weight of the gods draining her life away through the Covenants.

She has cuts down her legs and a probably-sprained wrist from her duel with the giant, and she’s aggravated her knife wound severely.

Altogether, coming back to Tenebrae had been the last straw, and had driven her into a kind of shock - Aranea had found Luna where she was kneeling by a frightened villager’s side, trying to heal him with a repetitive fixation which ignored the fact that he wasn’t actually _hurt_. 

Aranea had dragged her all the way back to the ship, made her shower, and then fished out the bottle that they’re sharing now.

Whatever’s in it, it’s definitely stronger than wine.

“Truth or dare,” Aranea says, soaking a rag in a cheap hi-potion.

“Truth,” Luna says.

Aranea groans. “You’re such a _baby_ ,” she complains. Kneeling in front of Luna, she wipes the cloth over her cut shin.

The curative prickles and stings at the edges of the gashes, but Luna feels too warm and heavy to flinch. “I’m not,” she argues. “Truth is more interesting. Besides, what could you _possibly_ dare me to do right now?”

Aranea looks up at her and winks. 

Luna… doesn’t quite know how to take it. 

When she doesn’t respond, Aranea drops her eyes again and goes back to her task, gently working the potion into the wounds. “Fine, okay. Truth…” 

Luna takes another drink from their bottle. It stings and burns like the potion, but without the sweetness of healing. Her face and thighs tingle.

“What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?” Aranea asks.

Luna makes a face.

“Hey,” Aranea shrugs, sitting back on her heels and reaching for the bottle. “You picked truth.”

Luna passes the drink, but keeps the bottle’s lid to fiddle with. She tries to think. It’s oddly hard. “When I was younger,” she says, “I was supposed to play the piano and sing at a holiday performance. There were several important guests. I forgot the song.”

Aranea snorts. “Okay, that’s pretty bad.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Luna cringes. She can feel her face turning pink, just like it had in the halls of Fleuret Manor as she sat frozen at the piano. She can still see her mother hiding her face in her hands, her brother clutching at his sides trying to smother his laughter. “I tried to make up a new one.”

Grinning, Aranea winds a bandage around Luna’s leg until the potion takes its full effect. “I just _bet_ you did.” 

“It wasn’t a very good song,” Luna says unnecessarily. She plays with her still damp hair, wondering why she’s talking so much. “Ravus teased me for years.”

Aranea doesn’t have an answer for that. Is it because she’s mourning a fellow former-Imperial officer, perhaps even a friend, or because she’s afraid of upsetting Luna?

Luna doesn’t feel upset. She feels lightheaded and strange.

“Okay, my turn,” Aranea says, settling down on the cot next to her. “Truth. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Luna doesn’t know what to ask, but she’s determined not to disappoint. She tries for a probing and intimate question: “How many people have you kissed?”

Aranea rolls her eyes. “That is _classic_. You sure you’ve never played this before?”

“Who would I have played it with?” Luna doesn’t mean for that to sound as pathetic as it does. She didn’t mean to say it at all. She’s beginning to understand the things people say about drinking.

Aranea frowns, then lets it pass. “I’ve kissed… huh, I’ve never actually counted. Less than you’re probably thinking.”

…How many had Luna been thinking? She isn’t sure. Now it’s difficult to think about anything else. “Were you in love with them?”

“That’s cheating.”

“You didn’t answer the first question. This is a replacement.”

“Fine,” Aranea says, not sounding too annoyed. “No, I wasn’t.”

“ _None_ of them?”

Aranea grins. “Don’t look so down, Lulu. You can have plenty of fun without being in love.”

Luna is sure that’s true. “You deserve more than fun,” she says. “If you want it.”

Aranea looks away. She scoffs and takes a long drink, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Sure. Like you have any experience with _fun_.”

Luna isn’t sure if that’s meant to be a joke about sex, or about her being too serious. Either way, she can’t really argue. “It’s your turn to ask me,” she says, taking the bottle back.

Their fingers brush as they hand the drink off. Luna traces the lip of the bottle.

“Truth or dare,” Aranea says, still not looking at her.

“Truth.”

Aranea shakes her head and pushes her bangs back from her face like she can’t believe what she’s about to say. “Do you want to marry Pretty Boy?”

…Noctis? Luna never would have thought to call him pretty. He is, she supposes, now that she thinks about it. Very soft and sweet-looking.

“Am _I_ pretty?”

Aranea stares at her, eyes wide. She starts laughing.

Luna isn’t joking - only her mother has ever told her that she’s pretty, and she genuinely wants to know. Surely Aranea will be able to tell her: Aranea is more than pretty. Luna’s never thought much of the way her own eyes go dark-circled when she’s tired, but on Aranea the shadows make her look beautiful and strong and tragic. Her freckles are nice, too. And her mouth when she smiles.

“Am I?” Luna insists.

“Hey, this was _your_ turn.”

Oh. That’s fair. 

But… _Does_ she want to marry Noctis? Luna doesn’t know the answer.

“I changed my mind,” she says. “Dare.”

Aranea looks surprised. 

Luna winks. It happens before she means to… but she doesn’t regret it.

Aranea looks away abruptly.“Sing me that song you made up,” she says. “From the holiday party.”

“I don’t remember it,” Luna laughs. “I worked very hard to forget it, actually.”

Aranea shrugs. “Whatever, then. It’s not like I have fancy taste in music, I don’t care.”

Luna doesn’t have fancy taste in music, either. Most of the songs she knows are traditional and hymn-like, or calls to the gods like the one she sang in Altissia. She doesn’t want to sing that one ever again. 

She shuts her eyes and tries to think. There’s a lullaby with no words that she’s used to humming to herself at night, that might work.

Her voice is raspy from breathing smoke as she starts, but she relaxes into it, willing her healing magic away from her stinging legs to make the singing easier. She wonders if her voice sounds at all like her mother’s. It’s not a very long song, so she sings it twice through, feeling warmer and heavier all the time, her eyes still closed.

When Aranea drapes a blanket around her shoulders, Luna realizes that she’s trailed off.

“You did not just sing _yourself_ to sleep,” Aranea laughs.

Luna grumbles at her, head heavy.

“Lightweight,” Aranea grins. She tucks Luna’s damp hair behind her ear, then leaves. She turns off the lights and shuts the door behind her.

—

Luna isn’t sure whether she actually falls asleep or not. She lays back and stares at the ceiling in the dark and keeps singing to herself.

At some point, she realizes that she’s never going home.

She’s never going to get married.

She’s going to die a martyr, with nobody ever knowing she was anything but dutiful and pious. There will be no trace left of her that isn’t inhuman and wreathed in light, no hint that she’d ever sweat or bled or cried. 

They taught her to kneel and pray and do her duty, but none of the priests could ever teach her how to stop _wanting._

Luna wants to grow old. She wants to be happy. She wants to go eat in restaurants by herself, and watch bad movies with someone who makes her laugh. She wants to fall in love. She wants to wake up in the morning and not feel the sunrise being torn out of her bones. She wants a million things.

Does she want to marry Noctis?

She’d take him, if she could get him. That childhood innocence isn’t something either of them can have, but they’ve pretended over the years. She’d take him and keep pretending. She has no illusions about what that makes her. 

But… she’s not sure it’s the same thing.

And she's never going to get the chance, anyway.

When Aranea comes back and flips the lights on, Luna sits up, oddly determined.

“Oh,” Aranea says, stopping in the doorway. “You weren’t sleeping?”

“No,” Luna says, and gets up from the bed. She’s still wobbly and tingling, her hair is sill damp, she’s probably still drunk but she finds she doesn’t care. She manages to make her way over to Aranea. She loops her arms around her neck.

Aranea tries to laugh it off, but her eyes are wide. “Okay, listen, we need to talk-“

“It’s all over, isn’t it?” Luna asks seriously.

“Lulu,” Aranea says firmly, and puts her hands on Luna’s shoulders. “You’re drunk as shit. And you’re _really_ not listening.”

Luna doesn’t want to listen. She’s been listening her whole life, to every prophecy and edict, to every story where she dies at the end. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, but she isn’t. She tips her head forward until her lips brush Aranea’s cheek, near her mouth.

Aranea tightens her grip on Luna’s shoulders. It feels nice, like being pulled closer. Like maybe for a little while, they can stay here together, out of the cosmos's sight and mind. 

But then they’re several feet apart again, and Aranea looks upset.

“I’m sorry,” Luna repeats, meaning it this time, feeling a chill of fear start at the base of her spine. She can’t make sense of anything, what-

“Your fiancé is here,” Aranea snaps, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. She lets her head fall back with an audible _bang_. “His Doe-Eyed Majesty and his buddies found their way in on the evening train.”

Luna tries to wrap her head around that. Noctis? Why would he come to Tenebrae, it’s ashes, it’s over, there’s nothing left for him. 

…Except Luna.

Luna feels sick to her stomach. She thinks of her long shower, the way Aranea had offered her the bottle afterwards, the time she spent dozing. “When did you find out?” 

“What?”

“Did you know? The whole time we were talking before, were you _stalling_ me?”

Aranea looks gutted. “Why the hell would I do that?”

Luna doesn’t know, but she got drunk and sulked and almost kissed Aranea while the world was falling to darkness, she finally knows where Noctis is but she’s still standing here, and she has no idea how to take responsibility for that. 

She is the _Oracle_.

Everything she’s done since Aranea rescued her, every risk she’s taken and moment she’s indulged herself in, it’s all been so unforgivably _selfish_. Her home and her brother, she can’t be thinking of things like that anymore. She certainly can’t think about an ex-Imperial mercenary. Her duty is to stand by her King, no more and no less.

“I’m leaving.”

“Luna,” Aranea says, furious. Not Lulu, not this time. She blocks the door with her body. “Don’t be stupid. Ardyn might not know you’re alive, you’d be giving yourself up.”

“I’m _meant_ to give myself up!” There are tears in Luna’s eyes, her head hurts and she’s dizzy and dying and she has no choice, why can’t anyone _understand_? “So is Noctis!”

Luna tries to push Aranea out of the way. Aranea moves easily, but grabs her arm, stopping her from leaving.

Luna goes rigid and unyielding, turns to stare her down. 

Aranea meets her gaze, angry. “You’re going with him to _die_.”

“I’m going with him,” Luna says as steadily as she can manage, pulling her arm away, “because it’s my duty.”

—

Luna misses the train.

She stands in the falling snow and watches it leave her behind.

Everything has gone so wrong. If she can’t even do the one job demanded of her by the gods, what point is there in her being alive? Isn’t she meant to be with Noctis? Why is she still here?

Gentiana is at her side soon enough. Just like every time she arrives, it feels like no time has passed since she last left. The reminder that the gods are watching is more infuriating than comforting this time, though, and Luna turns to face her, barefoot in the snow, her damp hair in her eyes.

“ _Why_ ,” Luna whispers.

Eyes closed, Gentiana smiles. “Fate is a strange creature, Lunafreya.”

Luna buries her face in Gentiana’s shoulder and cries.


End file.
